Hello! Our company just released an integration for Shopify via the app marketplace including a completely free fraud rules engine. We basically resell identity verification from major providers and pass our platform wide cost savings onto merchants. Visit it here:
apps.shopify.com/authorize-earth I get your frustration with problematic customers continuing to place orders even after manual cancellations and refunds. While Shopify Flow is a good native solution you've discovered, I wanted to share how our application can provide a more comprehensive approach to customer blocking that sounds perfect for your exact needs.
Our fraud prevention engine is our loss leader - we will never charge for any of the fraud engine features, only for the identity verification services that come as an additional step. That's how we can offer this completely free, which makes it ideal for situations like yours where you only need to block a few specific customers and can't justify a monthly subscription with the other apps.
We can also help prevent the repeat refund issue you mentioned with our "Repeat Refund" rule. This automatically flags customers who have an unusually high refund rate, which sounds like exactly what you're dealing with. You can configure it to catch customers who have:
A refund percentage above a certain threshold (default 40%, but adjustable from 10-100%)
A minimum number of orders (default 3 orders, adjustable 2-10)
Within a specific timeframe (default 180 days, adjustable 30-365 days)
Matching by customer ID, email, billing/shipping address, or even card fingerprint
You have two options for implementing this repeat refund rule:
Global Application: Apply the repeat refund rule to all customers via the "Global" tab in Step 2 (Rules configuration). This will automatically catch any customer across your entire store who meets the refund criteria.
Targeted Application: Only apply the repeat refund rule when a customer is already blacklisted in your system by setting up the "Customer Blacklist Status -> Blacklisted" threshold, and mapping the rule in step two, jsut to that specific threshold. This gives you more control over when the rule triggers.
This would have automatically flagged your problematic customer before you had to deal with multiple manual refunds.
Here's exactly how to set up customer blocking in our app:
Step 1: Add Customer to Blacklist
Go to your Shopify admin and open the Activity Feed sidebar tab of our application
Click on the "Trust Lists" tab at the top
Click the "Add Customer Blacklist Entry" button in the table
The email criteria is auto-selected, so just enter the email address you want to block
Click "Add to Blacklist"
This approach is much more efficient than adding emails to thresholds and allows you to block by email, card number, address, or other attributes as needed.
Step 2: Set Up the Integration
In the threshold configuration:
Select the instance condition: "Customer blacklist status"
Set the operator to: "blacklist"
Your summary should read: "Verification will be required when all of these are true: customer blacklist status is Blacklisted"
Skip the rule setup in integration step 2 (unless you want to do the rules setup i mentioned prior) - go directly to Step 3 (action mapping)
In the action mapping:
Scroll to the bottom and click "Show Advanced Configuration"
Map your blacklist instance directly to "Rejected" state
This should show: "Threshold Instance 1: Customer Blacklist Status is blacklisted → Map directly to verification outcome: Rejected"
Important: Don't change the default action mappings for Full Control, Limited Control, or Partial Control - they're already optimized for most scenarios.
This setup ensures that only the specific customers you've blacklisted will be blocked, while all legitimate customers can order normally. Because you mentioned you only have 2-3 customers to block, this free solution should handle your needs perfectly without any ongoing costs.
If you'd like personalized help with the setup, we're happy to do a consultation with you over a screencasted call so that I or one of our support reps can help you configure exactly what you need. Just reach out to jackk@authorize.earth or support@authorize.earth and we'll get you set up.
